Gentoo comes with X11R6, the Xorg server 6.8 series. However, with its release, Gentoo is migrating to Xorg 7.0. Xorg 7 is fundamentally different because its previous few packages have now been much split to form around 100 new packages which constitute the server. This has the advantage that small parts of the server can now be upgraded singly without having to recompile larger packages. Xorg 7.0 is necessary for XGL.

Steps

1

Unmask Xorg 7.0

Copy and paste the whole Modularized X section from /usr/portage/profiles/package.mask to /etc/portage/package.unmask and /etc/portage/package.keywords

Warning: If you're currently running X on this machine, it will continue to run until you close it or shut down the computer, but after uninstalling it, it may become very unstable, with applications unexpectedly crashing, or being unable to open.

This stage is really quite simple:

emerge -Ca xorg-x11

rm -rf /usr/lib/modules

rm -rf /usr/lib/opengl/xorg-x11

rm -rf /usr/lib/libGL*

Note: Make sure /usr/X11R6 is symlink to ../usr. If it isn't, delete that directory and create symlink.

3

Emerge X.org 7

First, you should set the appropriate VIDEO_CARDS and INPUT_DEVICES flags in make.conf. To see what flags are available, run emerge -pv xorg-x11. On a typical machine an ati graphics card, it might look like this:

VIDEO_CARDS="ati fglrx"
INPUT_DEVICES="mouse keyboard"

If you have an ati card, make sure that you have dri added as a USE flag.

Emerge it! emerge -av xorg-x11

Run etc-update (with sudo).

If you have an ati card with 3D acceleration (i.e. you're using fglrx), then emerge ati-drivers afterwards.